This blog has nothing to do with gorillas (though I love 'em)...fellow bloggers have inspired me to share vintage images of Disneyland from my personal collection. But don't be surprised if you see something from a World's Fair, Knott's Berry Farm, or someplace else that is cool!

Thursday, September 29, 2011

If you're visiting Disneyland, you've got to have your photo taken in front of the iconic Mickey Mouse floral portrait! (Just like when you come to my home, where you can have your photo taken in front of a floral portrait of me. It's stunning). One little kid is entranced by the locomotive that is just coming in to Main Street Station; possibly the first train he's ever seen. There's the Kalamazoo hand car. The fact that there is a real place called "Kalamazoo" makes me happy.

The lighting in this photo is strangely diffused and yet still bright. The street is still a bit wet from its morning scrubbing. No trash (or horse apples) here, thanks in part to the hard-working sanitation dude to our left. Guests stay on the sidewalks, something I always enjoy seeing in these vintage photos.

7 comments:

have to say that i never noticed before that Mickey was made with purple flowers. i remember seeing yellow flowers but not purple ones.

something i thought of when i looked at the image of Main Street that i hadnt thought about before are the trees. of course, if those trees we see were still there you would be able to build nice treehouses in them, so i had to get out a photo that i took on our trip during the 50th. of course i see that the trees in 2005 were not much larger than these are here. this makes me wonder where they replant these trees when they get too big for them to stay on Main Street? i hope they go to a good home! maybe there is a Main Street grove someplace, perhaps even in the park itself.

They are both very striking. The main Street USA shot when directly into my wallpaper rotation. I love seeing to old pictures with people acting accordingly and walking up and down the sidewalks.

The Autopia poster in the top picture is very nice. But what is priceless in the top picture is the little boy scouting out the EP as she pulls into station. What must be going through him mind. If he was like me I know that the insides are smiling as well as the outside.

Though Thufer's reading of the photograph is telling, I suspect early Disneyland visitors walked on the sidewalks of Maint Street, rather than in the street itself, because that is what they were used to doing in the real world. It's really testament to how revolutionary Disneyland actually was that people didn't quite know how to deal with it. Walt clearly intended people to walk in the street (he certainly did himself, based on photographs) and it was standard in the rest of the park as well (where there typically were not sidewalks). It's also possible, of course, that the people in this photo are sticking close to the buildings because it is drizzling. Though I love being able to see the architecture clearly, pictures of Disney parks without people always leave me feeling a little sad. Walt himself loved people filling the park and enjoying themselves (what an obvious statement, huh?) and I agree with Walt on this one. Having said that, it's still an interesting picture! Thanks for sharing your collection!

The clock on Main Street looks to me that it reads as 11:20 in the morning. The park looks fairly empty even at 11:20. Although I think Disneyland use to open at 10am back then. So that could account for it. Also, it is January.

The water on Main Street might be residue from the hosing of the streets they do every night.

Concerning the trees on Main Street. Nancy is right. I noticed it before and commented on it here as well in the past. They must take out the trees along Main Street from the Emporium up to the end of the street every couple of years and plant new ones. The Ficus trees around the train station inside the park are very large today, so those are probably original.

Nancy, Mickey has always been white and purple as long as I can remember. The flowers are alyssum, which come in only those colors, are easy to grow and bloom year around in the Anaheim climate.

Yellow pansies and other species are used to contrast according to the seasons. White cyclamen are often used in the winter months, these are also hardy and long-lasting.

When we visited in 2008, there was some kind of flashy lighting effect in the Mickey bed, where little xenon bulbs like camera flashes would go off periodically in a sequence to look like a tinkerbell zap.